


if that's how it's gonna be

by deepscholar



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gotham City - Freeform, High School AU, Multi, Nygmobblepot, gotham high school, i am such a god damn geek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 05:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12204723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepscholar/pseuds/deepscholar
Summary: bruce wayne only wants to get through his education, but everyone at this school is soweird.





	1. stinks in here

**Author's Note:**

> i know this has been done before but I WANNA DO IT TOO OK  
> just a heads up but yeah im british and obviously these guys are american and i have little to no idea how american schools work so!!!!!!!bear with me!!!!!!!!!! and if i make any mistakes or anything then feel free to correct me  
> also i'm sorry all the ages are inaccurate, iT's JuSt An AlTeRnAtE uNivErSe BrO  
> this is probably set in like the 80s or something idk  
> yeah let's just see how this goes!!

There is little time to be afraid.  
What matters now is to get the _fuck_ out of this school.

It's hard enough when you're the weird monotone rich kid, newly dragged into this great redbrick _asylum_ of a school, ploughing solely through your lessons and trying to avoid the yellow grin of that one weirdo near the back of the class.  
However, it's harder still when said weirdo attempts to blow up the school.

It's been about six minutes since everyone's evacuated, since the sirens began screaming and the teachers told you _not to grab your possessions, leave your coats and bags_ , and then stooped to gather up their satchels of secret drink they kept beneath their desks.  
Now, the Wayne kid stands on the pavement, decidedly shaken but only a little stirred, and while everyone else laughs and wails and grabs each other and pushes each other over, he watches the road, expecting his butler should receive the news right about now. He was always so quick.

Funny how hardly anyone's said anything to the grinning weirdo, like nobody even suspects him, or like they don't even care.  
His name's Napier, as far as Wayne knows. Jack Napier.  
The Jack Napier whose greasy black hair has a strange verdant sheen to it, and sticks to the back of his neck. The Jack Napier whose teeth are nearly orange, and long and straight and quite frightening in their apparent strength, for once he had bitten another kid's pen straight in half. The Jack Napier who everyone called queer for a while because they saw him with a stick of lipstick, and yet never saw him use it.  
He has a squealing theatrical voice and pasty white skin and he always clicks his heels and says ' _Whoo-whoooooo! Here comes the Wayne train!_ ' whenever Wayne enters a classroom or strides down a hallway.  
He'd been starting to bug him a little before this incident. Only a little, despite his consistent prodding, prying, jeering, babbling, incessant attempts to get under Wayne's skin;  
And now that the Gotham High School windows are all charred and black and blasted of their panes, and horrible plastic-smelling smoke is coming from the roof, Wayne turns to see Napier a little way across from him, his face twisted half into a hopeful expression of expectancy, and half into a scowl of desperation.  
_Why won't you hit me?_

* * *

“Holy smokes, did you hear?”  
“What?”  
“When the school blew up, there was a kid inside still.”  
“What?”  
Grayson had come hopping up as does a little bird, the shoes at the end of his twig legs clacking quietly against the corridor floor.  
“It's wild, Bruce, you wouldn't believe it! You know that Garfield kid, don't you?”  
Rich kid says no. Grayson becomes distracted all of a sudden by the loud sound of crashing glass from down the hallway, but pries himself from the instinct to run to the drama, unlike the other kids nearby.  
“Well, see, there was this kid, Garfield Something-or-other... well, actually, there still _is_ this kid, Garfield Something-or-other. He didn't die, he just got all frazzled up, see? He's in hospital now, of course, but still, it's pretty freaky that he lived! Won't that mess him up a lot?”  
Bruce had sort of blanked out a little while Dick Grayson had spoken, and now when he awakes to see those large eyes staring up at him, swimming with questions and excitement, he feels a little tired.  
“Yes,” he says, and then, “no,” and then, “we'll just have to see, Dick.”  
Dick goes to the middle school wing which is just about attached to Gotham High. Nobody was bumping the budget up so that a whole separate building could be made, so there's a quite miserable extra head added onto the side of the great brick monster which is the high school.  
Bruce is going on fifteen while Dick is eleven, and to him Bruce Wayne is the only god in this forsaken city, having comforted the little boy when he had fallen from the trapeze in his extra-curricular gymnastics class, and later when his pen had been bitten in half. It was an intimidating school they had found themselves in, and yet the only local one. Bruce had been home-schooled up until now. He had only been in this school for a little over a week, and of course everyone to whom his presence had yet been made known had clambered all over him like a pack of curious rats. Some had bitten, others had stepped off to watch the show. Some didn't give an honest damn at all, and Bruce Wayne found he appreciated those kids the most right now.

It is Tuesday now, and the explosion was last Thursday, yet all the pupils have been called back into school already so naturally most everyone's almost as fuming as the building itself. Everything reeks of soot and melted plastic and metal, and there aren't any windows any more on one side of the building, for the bomb had been placed near the front of the school. Naturally the headmaster is agitated, for any passing spectators or visiting parents will see a great rectangular brick prison, poked full of holes like a cheese grater and charred black like a piece of toast.  
So Bruce has only been in this school for five days, and so far he's experienced only confusion, fire alarms, and Jack Napier sniffing around the back of his neck during classes.

The first bell goes, and in a rush of sweat-stinking blazers flying and dirty black shoes slamming against the cold floor, everyone has crammed into the rather dirty classrooms like mice into a cage. First today was science, and the teacher's the father of a certain Crane who's in the same class as Bruce.  
Mr Crane is wiry and glaring and on the rare occasion that he smiles it never seems to look as if he's putting in a lot of effort to make himself look approachable. He has legs like stilts and eyes like some evil bird's, and his desk is marked with coffee rings and burn marks. Everyone's afraid of him. It seems as though he's okay with that.  
His son Johnathan is as stick-like in frame as his father, his back always arching over when he sits, and his eyes are wide and fearful even when he's conversing normally with classmates or teachers. But with his father it's a different matter, and not in the challenging way you'd perhaps expect from a boy whose teacher is his parent.  
Constantly he would receive strange looks from his father during biology or psychology lessons. Human instincts were a particularly prized topic in Mr Crane's classroom, and whenever the topic of _fear_ arose, it would start with a sideways glance at his son, and then the teacher would almost every time launch into a speech about fight-or-flight instincts, adrenal glands, chemicals, hydrocortisone...  
By the time the bell had gone to signal the end of the lesson, Crane would have settled to roost behind his desk again, staring at his notes and neglecting his class entirely, his mind in another world, and if they cared the other students would wonder why Johnathan was shaking.

This lesson, Johnathan is absent, as is Mr Crane, and in his place there stands a rather short yet still looming man whose head is lacking in hair, save for knitted brows and a thick chinstrap beard.

Already some kids decide to snicker as he squints through his circular glasses and stands with his hands behind his back, a pristine lab coat hanging from his blockish yet sophisticated form. When everyone is seated he twists his thin lips in an insincere smile.  
"Greetings, class, I am Doctor Hugo Strange."  
Immediately there is a ripple of laughter, obviously. The man simply couldn't be self aware at all.  
"Unfortunately your usual teacher, Doctor Gerald Crane, has been impaired in the way of work by the incident which occurred last Thursday. He has lost many of his lesson plans and papers, as well as suffering medically to some degree. He has weak... organs. The smoke, you understand."

As children often do, the class had fallen deathly silent not from respect, but to shrink from any cues which may have been expected of them by the substitute teacher, and in attempt to crush him in a pressing vacuum of awkwardness. It doesn't work. Hugo Strange smiles again.

"What about his son?" blurts a shrill voice right at the front of the class before the teacher can speak again. The boy who spoke pushes his large square glasses up his nose, and raises himself in his seat so that he is somewhat more level with Strange, though it hardly makes a difference.  
Edward Nygma is really annoying, people know that much.

"Johnathan is remaining with his father for a little while during his recovery. The detonation, while thankfully not as serious as it could have been, has quite shaken him, I am afraid."  
"Yeah, well, you're not the only one who's _afraid_ , wise guy. Do you even have a-a-a qualification to teach? 'Cause you sure don't look like you do."  
Strange frowns, and to everyone's relief someone else shouts out, "Napier set the bomb off!" like stating the obvious yet unspoken made him cool. Jack is leaning on his elbows, and upon hearing this he breaks into a stinking grin, and as if by clockwork the class starts up again in a buzz of conversation.

Bruce sits near the center of the room. It's like that for all his lessons, and now that he thinks about it he doesn't like it too much, the fact that everyone's always looking at him like he's some centrepiece to be gawked at and whispered about, to be sized up.  
Billionaire Bruce Wayne, the kid every poor Gothamite family hated right off the bat, and who every little boy and girl either saw as a mystical boy-king who might not even be real, or as something to be hated and torn from his high horse.  
_How'd he like it down here, for a change?_ had grumbled Garfield Lynns, the kid who got burnt, only a few weeks before the rumour had arisen that the billionaire boy himself would be leaving home tutoring for a while to gain the experience of public school life.  
For a day or two it had been all anybody had spoken about. Eager fists and sharp tongues awaited the change to finally let loose upon the little worm. _Hey, Wayne, how's mommy?_  
But, as is generally custom to the people of Gotham City, if things don't go off with a bang right away then interest falters and voices die back down to the usual talk. That's probably why the bomb caused more excitement. That's a big bang.

Science dragged by, as Strange droned on about something which he clearly didn't really care for, which led Bruce and certainly others to ponder on what his scientific speciality might be if not this.  
Nygma kept interrupting and trying to talk big, and Strange would squint blankly at him and tilt his head slightly and do one of those 'mm- _hmm_ ' noises that are supposed to represent a faint laugh, but which really sound wholly uncaring.  
Nobody was focused enough to be actually relieved when the bell went, but there was still the usual upheaval of noise and chatter as everyone dispersed, and the teachers would shout over them that they were dismissed as if the students were actually obeying them.

* * *

Two periods pass and then there's recess, in which most people shuffle into the dull gravelly courtyard and sit around on the benches, and on the base of the gargoyle fountain which stands in the centre. There's hardly any room to run about and be vigorous but Gothamites love vigorousness, so dotted here and there, clumps of kids shove each other and strut in circles and occasionally dart out a fist at the air, most of them too afraid to actually pack a punch because the kids who fight are also the kids with tough friends, and to keep your enemies close tends to be a common motto here.  
Bruce's uniform is close to immaculate, nicely ironed and collar done up to the top, quite different from the usual scruffy presentations of students here.  
He steps out across the courtyard and reaches an empty bench; break has just started and not everyone is out yet. Pulling his diary from his backpack, which he has resolved to keep and to update quite frequently with his findings of this place, he taps a pencil to his lips and considers if he has anything to write yet. All that there is in the diary so far is what he wrote the previous Monday, on his first day, just as he had arrived at the school before the first bell had gone.

_monday, september 4th, 19___

_i am to keep this diary for a record of my experience at gotham high school, of which today shall be my first day_

_i'm inside the building now, and it's huge. it looks a little like blackgate prison itself, except that the sign stating its name on the outside is less impressive than blackgate's. so far nobody has noticed me, nobody has spoken to me. first period is math_

Now, Bruce turns a page and scribbles in ' _september 12th_ ', but before he can write any further there comes a loud voice from over his shoulder.  
“Dear diary, today I saw a real life _poor_ person! Whatever shall I do?”  
Hot and faintly meat-stinking breath blasts onto Bruce's face when he turns, and he is for a moment quite sure someone is playing a trick, or that he is dreaming, for he sees a boy who must be about 16, but who has the most strange facial structure that he has ever seen in a human. 

He reminds him of the crocodiles and the alligators which he had seen once in Kenya, when his mother had taken him. His skin is discoloured and callused-looking, and his jaw juts out like a barracuda's, his entire face from the bridge of his nose and down sloping forward, his nose partially blended in so that his nostrils are almost mere slits. There are lumps in his flesh that give the impression of _scales_. His teeth are worse than Napier's, thin and crooked and filling his mouth in a way that seems simply too animalistic to be so. Consequently this specimen looks absurdly out of place in his school uniform, hulking above other students at a height of perhaps six foot or more, the terrifying musculature of his form shown clearly through his small waist and barrel chest. His backpack, slung over one shoulder, seems almost a comical afterthought.  
Hanging slightly behind him are several other sneering kids, though they also seem nervous that they too might receive the wrath of the crocodile boy.

“What's up, rich boy? You keepin' files on us? For _science_ , is it? Or for the government, is that your kinda thing?”  
Bruce shuffles where he sits, keeping eye contact with the beastly student so as not to seem unsettled, though truly he does not feel any real fear. He has delved through the nature of Gotham City too much to be alarmed by such extremities.  
“No, I'm just keeping a diary for my lessons. I want to do extra studies at home.”  
The crocodile boy's livid eyes are small and orange, and they blaze as they stare, a snarling hiss bursting from between his teeth. The boys watching snicker nefariously, as more students trail off and approach the scene, faces twisted with the spirit of the fight.  
The crocodile boy turns briefly to face his audience, and sneers, “Little Brucie's looking forward to his lessons, isn't that just _sweet_?” and he is answered by a horrible rise of voices hooting and mocking, as well as two or three people shouting “Get him, Waylon!”  
Waylon seems to like this prospect, and he strikes out to grab Bruce by the collar but misses by a hair's breadth, the boy's reflexes _just_ quick enough to pull him back.  
Yet this miss does not deter Waylon for a second, and in a ghastly prehistoric manner he hunches over into an attacking stance and leaps up over the back of the bench, landing where Bruce would have been if he hadn't thrown himself upon the gravel before the impact. The audience, in the tension, had become hushed, but now they rise again in a chorus of shouting and screaming with delight.  
Bruce breathes heavily, his backpack and its contents strewn out across the floor by the bench. Waylon is now evidently angered, and Bruce finds his pulse thumping in his ears when he accepts that upon the next pounce from the crocodilian beast he should be all but torn apart. It doesn't matter, not in this moment, that he is Bruce Wayne, only that he has stepped into a place where he and his ways are not how it is.

_Well, if that's how it's gonna be..._

While the beast watches, the boy stumbles backwards and picks himself up, his eyes grave and face blank and surveying. That he is not screaming and sobbing and begging as they had expected he would seems to throw them off, and Waylon's lip curls. Bruce can feel one side of his body and back have been scraped and hurt by the gravel; his shirt and blazer are coarse and thin, and he can feel something trickling down from behind a shoulder blade. Yet he stands straight and looks Waylon in the eye.  
“I would like my backpack, please.”


	2. oh, hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bruce continues enduring his new school, both becoming more acquainted with his fellow classmates, and meeting new faces

The hospital wing is cold and everything is white; flickering white lights, white plastic desk, whitewashed walls... perhaps this is to give a professional impression, though Bruce has been sitting in the same small chair for about ten minutes and the nurses have apparently forgotten him for now, despite his bloodied nose, kicked and bruised shins and scraped skin along his back and left shoulder. He hates to pay attention to the feeling that his shirt is sticking to the dampness of blood which prevails there.

This room is empty, save for Bruce and one other boy who has also been abandoned, it seems, even though he appears more worse for wear than Bruce in the way that he is covering his face with his hands, and his right ankle is visibly twisted to the side in a way that does not seem natural.  
“Are you okay?” is what Bruce supposes he should say, so he says it. His reputation is already shit so the least he can do is be _polite_ to a fault before anything else.  
The boy looks up from his white and knobbly hands and his eyes are bloodshot and ice-blue, cheeks and upper nose flushed with red and dotted with freckles, which stand out against his pallor in a way that seems unhealthy.  
He does not look particularly healthy at all, as a matter of fact. When he draws his hands down into his lap, where he clenches them, Bruce is able to see a quite bird-like face with bitterness shining through the wide eyes. A long hooked red nose serves as something of a beak, and he has thin lips which he constantly bites and pulls at with his yellowed teeth. Greasy black hair sticks against his forehead in streaks, and clasps around the sides of his face.  
He is chubby and his back heaves where he sits, so that he might have been crying while his face was hidden, but now that he has been addressed he glares with a form of resentment into the face of the boy who spoke, like he's been threatened. He bites some skin off his bottom lip and takes it between his teeth, chewing it in a vulgar manner.  
“Bruce Wayne.” His voice is nasal and sharp. “What do you think?”

_What happened to your leg? Did someone do that to you? Do you have a physical defect? Why does everyone hate me so much already? Why do you hate me?_

“What's your name?” Bruce sits up straighter but doesn't bother smiling, though his face is not quite grave but rather reading, focused.  
The bird's face twitches slightly in annoyance, and he seems like he's about to say, _what's it to you?_ before he changes his mind.  
“Oswald. Cobblepot.”  
Then, “I expected you to get beaten up but not by Waylon Jones, not yet. He usually waits till you're already weak and then he finishes you off. He's a predator.”  
Oswald speaks quickly but his voice is not slurred. His accent is much more refined than the usual Gotham drawl, though still American. He seems generally shrewd, vulture-like.  
“Waylon Jones? He's the boy with the-”  
Quickly he cuts himself off; who knows what'll offend here? Yet Oswald smirks and says, “Yes, he is,” before Bruce can feel too apologetic.  
Settling himself a little more in his seat – for he had been perching painfully on the edge – Bruce brushes a foot against his backpack, the thing which had been the cause for Waylon Jones' final burst of anger which had left Bruce so bruised.  
“What... why is he _like_ that?” he mutters in a slightly lower tone, more out of uncertainty than of fear.  
Oswald replies louder, after drawing in a breath, as if to demonstrate a distaste for the subject of which they spoke.  
“Epidermolytic hyperkeratosis.”  
“Oh. What's..?”  
“Skin disease. Except Jones is a freak, it's not supposed to make you like that. Infected people are supposed to just look rough and scaly in general, whereas Jones is a damn beast.”  
Oswald scratches his nose and sniffs wetly; he seems generally _damp_ , clammy, like he's ill, which he probably is. He leans toward the empty reception desk, which is close to his left, and yanks a tissue from a paper box. His actions are fluent like he's used to this room, bored and yet defensive of his position, like he's used to weird stares and has developed his own body language for _what the fuck are you looking at?_  
After a short while, following a wiping of his nose and a rubbing of his forehead with a stubby hand, Oswald murmurs, “Are you in Edward's class? Edward Nygma, I mean.”  
“Yes, I am. He was quite rude to our substitute science teacher first period today.”  
Oswald grins lopsidedly. “Of course he was.”  
“Are you friends with Edward?”  
“Yes,” he replies shortly, and looks away, his grin having grown smaller yet still curiously present. From his eyes he is evidently thinking now, and wishes to answer no more.  
Bruce imagines the tall and arrogant Nygma standing alongside the hunched and pallid Cobblepot, a loud and colourful set of teeth chattering endlessly, next to this grumbling and nervous creature of cold climes and stiffness. 

“Cobblepot,” comes the sound of a nurse's voice from a door behind the desk, and with an exasperated sigh and a whisper of “ _finally_ ” Oswald stands and begins to _drag_ himself forward, his twisted right foot scraping and his body lurching in a way that is painful to watch, like he could really use a cane. Silently, Bruce changes his 'vulture' note in his head into 'penguin'.  
When he has disappeared into the room, amongst some murmuring Bruce picks up the growled phrase, “they broke my umbrella and hit me with it”.

* * *

He had declined a bright blue plaster, and so now he walks into third period slightly late with a sore-looking red cut on one cheekbone; it's a good thing his uniform is so concealing, for there are greeny-yellow patches around his stomach and rib cage and knees which he knows will blossom into black and blue. His back is also beginning to scab in places where it was scraped against the gravel. Despite the thinness of his shirt, the fabric prevented any actual gravel from getting in the wound, thankfully.  
Of course despite his injuries Bruce Wayne resolves to keep his expression characteristically stoic, as usual. He doesn't feel like a victim, doesn't feel like a cornered animal, so why should he act like one?  
Let the sharks come at the scent of his blood, they would never get a taste.

When he knocks at the door of the classroom, the english teacher, a Mister Wesker whose skin seems tight around his furrowed brows, grants him entry, and Bruce briskly enters and sits at his desk. Already eyes are upon him - _of course_ \- but he disregards them, focusing on the quavering voice of the teacher, who always seemed to talk apologetically as if he was displeasing some greater power.  
On either side of Bruce in every lesson there's a handsome and careless boy called Hagen and a squinting loner called Fries, and neither of them have spoken to him thus far. In fact, out of the whole class they have been amongst those few who have paid little to no attention to him at all. Then again, Fries hardly ever speaks and always looks as though he's trying to take a shit because his cheeks are all sunken and his lips are puckered and even though his round glasses are clear you always feel as though you have to look closely to see his eyes. He has a buzz cut and a furrowed brow, and he likes to put his pencils behind his ears and balance rulers on his hands even while listening to the teachers.  
Hagen is a different story, however. Everyone calls him Matt and he acts like a biker from the sixties or something. He thinks he's a big shot even though he's 15, and a lot of girls apparently like him and talk about the leather jackets he owns that he wears on the weekends. Slumping in his chair and chewing the rubbers off the ends of his pencils, Matt only really listens during math because he likes the straightforwardness of adding, subtracting, putting this number there and timesing this by that. He wants school out of the way so that the really complicated stuff can be real and dirty and worth paying attention to later on; he wants to be an actor.

Bruce had never considered that he might find out about other people while at this school. It's strange how he's never taken into account that education is no straight path, and that there are voices other than those of teachers which will spur him on and throw him off and make him lie awake at night.

"Psst. Brucie."

Of course.  
Jack Napier taps Bruce on the shoulder when Mister Wesker has told the class to converse over the lesson's topic. He peers over his shoulder. Jack has taken a blue marker and drawn cartoon tears running from his eyes all the way down his face, but he's grinning as usual, and he raises his knuckles and makes a gesture of rubbing his eyes.  
"Don't be sad. Be glad. Always."  
Bruce blinks and refrains from raising an eyebrow. "I'm not sad."  
"Did the Croc bite you? Or did he just call you a loser? Words can cut as well as razor sharp appendages, you know!"  
Supposedly the news of the attack has already become widespread amongst the school. _Perfect._  
"I'm fine, Jack." Bruce remains neutral in tone and blank in expression, like he's talking to some erratic mental patient - which he supposes he might as well be.  
Jack curls the corners of his mouth up and slightly inward, like his lip is made of elastic, and he tilts his chin down, quirking his brow exaggeratedly as if to state that he's not convinced; he slightly exposes his horrible teeth as a deep and chortling laugh begins in his chest and rises into a high cackle in his mouth. The wavering voice of Wesker tells him to go and wash that marker off his face in the bathroom, and Jack stops laughing abruptly, his face transforming immediately to one of an exaggerated snarling expression before he stands up to move to the door.  
Bruce is still watching him steadily when the voice of Matt calls him by name, and he turns back round again with a slight frown. Matt has spit some pink rubber pieces across his desk and is leaning over the side of his chair like he's exhausted, looking dully at Bruce with his mouth hanging a little open. He asks if there's been any homework for English that's set today, even though he knows there isn't, and then after a short space of time, during which he picks some rubber from his teeth, he casually asks what he'd obviously intended to say all along.  
"So what's life as a billionaire like?"

Bruce forces a plain smile. “Matt, I'm here to learn.” Simple as. If he described his home life anyway it could easily be taken as boasting. Perhaps that's why Matt asked in the first place, a test.

“Yeah, Hagen,” pipes up the leering voice of Nygma from a desk in front of Matt's, “Wayne is here to _learn_ , not to _teach_. You'll have to keep dreaming.” He'd been working yet still somehow listening to everything at the same time, eavesdropping purely for the chance of an opportunity to drop in. Apparently he's up for being difficult, perhaps to show off in front of Bruce Wayne, to feed some superiority complex or another. Nygma spins partially around on his chair so that he's sitting on it sideways, and in his fingers he's folding paper into intricate shapes without even looking at it. He puts on a mock frown, his eyes glistening.  
“Poor Matthew. Are you still using that face-molding clay at all? You know, the one you stole from that other guy, what's his name..? Karlo? Or are you two sharing tips?" 

Hagen twists the bridge of his nose and curls his lip into a snarl, running one hand through his well brushed, dark brown hair; when he watches his actions in detail, Bruce notes that they all seem a little too smooth, like he's a rendering of a human but not much more.

“You're not cool, Nygma, and you're not funny either.” He vaguely gestures towards Bruce, twirling his finger near his head: ' _crazy_ '. Now he's smirking again, which makes Nygma's face stiffen in a toothy grin as he settles an elbow on the back of his chair as if inviting a challenge. Matt leans forward like he's preparing to speak to a child, and says in a teasing voice:  
“Thirty white horses on a red hill, they champ then they stamp-"  
“Teeth, teeth, it's _teeth_.”  
Nygma immediately screws up his face like he's insulted, and turns back round again for a moment, while Matt glances with a comically bewildered _'can you believe this guy?'_ expression. Abruptly whirling round again, this time to face Bruce, and with a hungry and suspecting gleam in his eye, Nygma hisses, “ _The poor have it, the rich need it, and if you eat it you'll die. What am I?_ ” 

A riddle. Why is everyone here so singularly strange? _Or am I just boring?_ Bruce considers. Maybe a life locked up, the city kept out, is the way to stay sane rather than the opposite.

He knows he's heard this riddle before, though. His father had been fond of them on occasion.

  
_Money? No, the poor don't have that. Death? ...No, that's...._  
Nygma is completely still, suspended in the same twisted position as he awaits an answer, or a yielding, with wide eyes and firm face.  
_Something, something, something..... Oh, wait..._

He supposes he should've said, 'The answer is nothing', but instead he says,“You're nothing,” which may have accidentally rubbed in Nygma's defeat. “The poor have nothing, the rich need nothing, and if you eat nothing... am I correct?”

Physical defeat, when dramatic enough, can be admittedly extremely amusing. Nygma's face falls tragically and he cringes back into his seat, his eyes burning as they glare into Bruce's and his fingers curling, shoulders raising like a cornered creature, while Hagen bursts out laughing and squeaks “ _what?!_ ” between breaths. Slowly Nygma turns back round and pretends to bend over his work like that's where his priorities lie in this moment, and he places that folded paper on the side of his desk; he has folded it into an origami bird which looks like a penguin. 

* * *

There are five periods in a day. School starts at eight thirty and ends at four, which seems too long but what can you do, really?  
Fourth period – which is art, taught by Mister Valentin – goes by very quickly, which is quite relieving. Mister Valentin has a weird accent that nobody can place, and he has piggish eyes that stare out from his haunted face like marbles. His voice is weird and squealing, and he always wears a pink sweater which he tucks into his trousers, making him look even fatter than he is.

“The key,” he declared once during the lesson, “to true still life, is _perfection_ ,” and he breathed out the word 'perfection' again while looking off dramatically through the window pane, of which the glass has still not been replaced since the bomb's detonation.

“What has been humanity's drive since Ancient Rome? To achieve perfection. It has always been the philosophy of the greatest men as it has been mine, and as it should be yours. Do _not_..” - here he pointed at Nygma, who had raised his hand - “...ever believe that nothing can be perfect. It is just a matter of _patience_ , and of brain power.” He turned his pig eyes to the ceiling, sweating obscenely. “Everybody take out your 2b pencils, we are doing shading exercises. Apples are on my desk, take one between two, don't eat them, I don't want strange saliva all around my classroom.”

By the time the bell went and Valentin bade the class dismissal, everyone was considerably uncomfortable. It's no wonder Hagen, as well as apparently several more people, had bunked that lesson, though Jack Napier seemed peculiarly bored, like he thought people were reacting _too_ negatively to something which he found tame and dull. This is probably also why he decided to imitate Valentin during the lesson, tucking in his shirt, sticking out his stomach and turning up his nose with a thumb, making uncannily realistic pig noises between mispronounced words. This is also what got him sent out of the classroom, and despite being commanded to be silent by Valentin he talked loudly and cheerfully as he was ushered from the room; " _Really_ , Lazlo, you ought to be more self aware if you're gonna be so philosophical!"

Now it's lunch break, and Bruce decides he won't go out into the courtyard again just yet, in case some other hulking predator has taken to prowling and testing the air for Wayne blood. Instead, he takes the crowded staircase down to the lunch hall. The classroom walls are flat, and textured only with occasional dry lumps in the white paint, but the lunch hall has steep walls and a high ceiling and is all made of rough red bricks, just like the school's exterior. A din of voices and laughter and the clatter of crockery fills the room and serves as a perpetual atmosphere, along with the conflicting smell of old food which hangs like a plague.  
Lunch isn't free. It's three dollars for a fairly small portion of whatever it is they're serving today - exactly _what_ it is, Bruce isn't completely sure from its appearance - and it's about five dollars for a larger one. Despite his obvious lack of a handicap in the way of being able to pay for things, Bruce decides he'd rather take the smaller portion.  
There's a student apparently volunteering in the school kitchens who's standing behind the greasy metal counter, and it's hard not to stare. He is morbidly obese and his eyes are small and doleful, and peer out from the folds in his face. His lips are tightly pressed together as if in some unspeakable inner fury. Unspeakable indeed, for he doesn't talk at all, and when Bruce shifts his tray along the silver bars and awaits his plate he receives a blank and piercing look for a moment before his plate is set down with a clatter. When he looks, Bruce sees that his name tag says 'H.D.', but nothing more.

The hall is filled with tables all placed in parallel lines. As he steps down along the side of the room, carrying his greasy tray in his hands, Bruce quietly observes the students present. There are some obvious minor cliques bunched together here and there, the largest of which are loud and intentionally threatening. Waylon Jones is a looming presence near the centre of the hall, his terrible jaws occasionally rattling with guttural laughter at something said to him by one of his cronies. Matt Hagen and some other boy, who has a mean and twisting face, sit near each other and appear to be arguing, while several girls close to them giggle amongst each other as they gradually move closer. Scouring a little deeper, poking for faces he knows, Bruce identifies Edward Nygma and the crippled boy, Oswald Cobblepot, sitting at the very end of a bench at the far end of the room, conversing quietly, while a boy with straggly long hair around his shoulders lays out cards on the table with a grin like he's expecting a game, though everyone near him looks a little repulsed.

Beginning to feel burning eyes on him, Bruce chooses a place to slot into at random, sliding onto the end of a bench with his gaze solely upon his plate. The people sitting around him do not speak, and the silence is noticeable even through the clamour of the hall.  
_God, I wish I wasn't Bruce Wayne right now,_ is the single dumb thought which trails through his head.  
Eventually he looks up from his grit-tasting food, and the boy opposite him is alerted, as he had momentarily turned away. He smiles surprisingly brightly, and Bruce feels rude to stare where he should be returning it, so he does.  
This boy has immaculately cropped blonde hair and looks generally spotless, probably standing at about Bruce's height. His eyes are blue but the left one seems slightly darker. He looks like the grinning businessman figure on the front of some enterprise brochure, his hands clasping each other and resting on the table.  
"Hi," he says in a pleasant tone. "Name's Harvey Dent. Nice to meet you, Bruce Wayne."  
Dent. He knows that name; rich family of respectable business. He's sure his parents had had a Dent or two over for dinner before.  
"Nice to meet you, Harvey."  
Harvey has already finished eating, it seems, though much of the miscellaneous stuff left on his plate looks less than edible. Bruce in this moment feels an irresistible yearning for one of his butler's dishes, no matter how simple. Even shepherd's pie would suffice right now.  
"So you got here... when?" queries Harvey.  
"Beginning of last week."  
Grimacing sympathetically, Harvey groans, "Oh, so you experienced that whole... _incident_ with the bomb? What a great introduction."  
Bruce nods, but then smiles faintly. "Are bombs common in most schools?"  
"Hah, very funny. Though I'd imagine we've had our fair share of crises, more so than the next school along."  
At this Harvey draws his lips into a pondering line, and turns his eyes to the ceiling longingly. When he speaks again his voice is lower.  
"Oh, what I wouldn't give for my parents to move further out of the city and more into the country. I tell you, Bruce, they have the best private schools there. I hate to sound a snob, though," he adds, glancing back with a joking widening of the eyes.  
"You are a snob, Harvey," retorts a female voice from somewhere behind him, and a girl who Bruce hadn't even noticed turns round from her seat on the next bench along. She briefly flicks her gaze over Bruce and her eyebrows gently crease like she's unimpressed. "I thought you'd be taller."  
Harvey flushes slightly and introduces the girl as Selina. "Don't take her insults personally," he adds in a slight whisper, leaning slightly towards Bruce, but the girl called Selina immediately says in her sharp and uninterested voice, "Uh, why shouldn't he? What if they are personal?" She spins round on her seat, drawing up her knees elegantly so as not to kick the girl sitting next to her, and balances her elbows on her knees and rests her head upon her palms. They look grubby, and her hair is unbrushed and frizzy. Her school uniform is evidently too big for her lithe frame, the blazer falling from her shoulders like she's a mere coat hanger, and the white shirt underneath has the front pocket which only the boys' shirts are supposed to have, immediately giving away that this uniform was never meant for her. Yet the apathy which glazes over her eyes clearly shows that if she's stolen it, she gives no shits about if she's called out on it or not.  
Bruce tilts his lips in a half smile. “Well, hi, then.”  
Selina scowls for a second but there is no real anger in her eyes. Rather she seems exasperated, like a wild cat being petted and led by a collar. “You got beaten up already? Tsst. Got a lot to learn, kid. First thing about kids round this block? They hold grudges.” She pauses with a matter-of-fact crease of the brow again, her eyes half-lidded and unimpressed, but suddenly they widen again at something past Bruce and she hisses “Oh, shit-!” and swings herself beneath her table with a swift movement. Bewildered, Bruce watches as she disappears further along; she is crawling upon all fours beneath the row of tables, dodging kicking feet and making for the exit.  
The confusion, however, only lasts a couple seconds longer, as quickly Bruce feels someone shift onto the edge of the bench, where he had been sitting, and an elbow jabs him in the ribs so he moves up. A loud and hot breath which he feels brushing his neck tells him of Jack Napier's arrival.  
“Hiya, Brucie. Scabs yet, or still bleeding?”  
Without turning his head, he can see that Jack's face is right by his, gleaming eyes pressing into him even while he pulls out his small lunch box. When he clicks open the lid there is only one large cupcake standing in it, the icing partially crushed. There is a 'J' on it, poorly traced in red.  
“It was my birthday last week. Y'know, the day of the...” Jack puffs up his cheeks and lets out a faint ' _boom_ ', gesturing an explosion with his hands.  
Harvey seems uncomfortable yet stern, his eyes looking only upon Bruce and his lips a straight line. Upon noticing him, to Bruce's relief Jack turns his head, and cries, “Big Bad Harv! How go things? Been biting any more people recently?”  
Something flashes through Harvey's eyes for a moment, and his jaw clenches. Jack turns back to Bruce, while his fingers pull pieces of icing off the cupcake. “See, something ya don't know about good old Harvey here, is... ooh, would you look at that, you _do_ have a scab!”  
Bruce blinks hard at the contact of dry fingers on his cheek, and then shouts aloud and tries to push Jack away when he feels a sharp ripping of pain through his face, the scab which had developed on his cheekbone having been torn away with no consideration.  
Jack titters and pretends to apologise when Bruce stands and collects his tray, intending to leave; he'd eaten all he felt he could stomach anyway. “Nice to meet you, Harvey,” he mutters to the boy whose eyes now seem distant and harsh. Stepping over the bench he had sat on and moving out of the rabble, Jack's cackling fades and almost immediately his voice falls to a vaguely amused growl. “Aw, shit, I smell a kitty cat. Brucie, you haven't seen one around, have you? Little bitch stole from me.”  
Bruce says nothing and moves down along the side of the hall, making for the doors so that he can await his next lesson. As he nears, he spies some faint figure in the open crack of a 'staff only' closet filled with mops and cones near the hall door; when he passes he briefly meets with the gaze of a jaded predator, who hunts through the crowd with her green eyes.

* * *

Final period ends and it takes over ten minutes to even get near the exit. When he pushes out into the fresh air, sweaty hands tight around the straps of his backpack, there is no more relieving sight than the stretching away of the streets which he knows points home. This freedom, along with a "Holy mackerel!" from the small and hopping form of Dick Grayson as he approaches, allows Bruce the satisfaction of sighing deeply.  
He has, since his parents' murder, been trying to prepare himself for the harshness of the world, training himself to be tolerant and powerful, and yet no such thing as this had been expected at the heart of it, though, sucking down a breath, he decides he shall not section it off into positives and negatives just yet. A pencil ricochets off his right shoe, and Dick rubs his chin, staring with eyes like saucers upon the evident crease in Bruce's posture, and at the shiny pink line on his cheekbone where the scab had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAfgAfaA this is really fun to write but i need some ideas if anyone has any for next chapter  
> im gonna look at some general prompts for this sorta AU but yeah

**Author's Note:**

> WOHOO OK HERE WE GO  
> obviously feedback and kudos are appreciated, im just launching into this and seeing what happens so yeah if anyone has any thoughts then come at me


End file.
